Why is HN harping on the blockchain aspect of this so hard? Vote counting IS actually one of the appropriate uses of it, considering it provides non-repudiation in a manner that can be verified by anyone. The biggest issue here is the initial assignment of 1 "vote coin" per person during the initial roll-out. Assuming they can solve that problem (and that's a big if), they can simply create new block chains for each election in which every potential voter is again assigned 1 vote.
I realize that this has the side-effect of killing off anonymous voting (at least to whoever doled out the tokens, you'd still be anonymous to your neighbors), but I think that is a good thing. While you can argue about what the side-effects that has on individual voters in extraordinary circumstances, fact of the matter is, anonymous voting makes it effectively impossible to verify the percentages each candidate achieved.
I realize that this has the side-effect of killing off anonymous voting (at least to whoever doled out the tokens, you'd still be anonymous to your neighbors), but I think that is a good thing. While you can argue about what the side-effects that has on individual voters in extraordinary circumstances, fact of the matter is, anonymous voting makes it effectively impossible to verify the percentages each candidate achieved.